RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30393, 18 March 1964, Page 28

RANDOM REMINDER

TALKING POINT

Another cricket test series has ended and the summer game is about to put on its winter woollies. But before long, they will be at it again, and a most important season it will be, with the selection at the end of the team to tour England. New Zealand has never won a test series in England or, for that matter, anywhere else. The game in this country would be done outstanding service if the 1965 team could beat England. All the ordinary methods—picking the best players, coaching them, coaxing them—have failed. New Zealand cricketers are too conscious of their shortcomings. So it

seems clear that a lead will have to be taken from the considerable speeches of Mr Cassius Clay whose success in winning the world heavy-weight title was attributable, it seems, largely to his oft-stated conviction that he is the greatest. It might not be easy to persuade John Reid and his colleagues, who are modest men, of the value or desirability of an allout publicity campaign to precede the test matches in England. But it should be done. And it should start now. It should not be too difficult to rustle up a few of those charming little couplets Cassius Clay dispensed with such freedom. "When we meet Lord Ted,

we ll have his head" seems to reach the required standard; or perhaps "When we reach the Oval, we’ll hit him to Deauville." Enough chants, chanted by enough chanters, could work wonders. It would, of course, require Reid to make some sort of scene at the first function at which he finds the England captain. He might have to be restained—at the last moment from punching the president of the M.C.C. on the nose. And, of course, to all and every newspaperman, he would have to maintain a stream of ridicule about England, its players and its prospects. It might not improve New Zealand’s test record. But it would probably pay.